I have a key interest in how public life might be shaped by social technology so I found Danah Boyd’s work interesting. I listened to a podcast of Social Network Sites: public, private or what? which had me reflecting as I worked in my studio.
Social network sites are the latest generation of ‘mediated publics’ – environments where people can gather publicly through mediating technology. In some senses, mediated publics are similar to the unmediated publics with which most people are familiar – parks, malls, parking lots, cafes, etc. Teens show up to connect with their friends. Other people are likely to be present and might be brought into the circle of conversation, if they’re interesting, or ignored if not.
Public spaces have many purposes in social life – they allow people to make sense of the social norms that regulate society, they let people learn to express themselves and learn from the reactions of others, and they let people make certain acts or expressions ‘real’ by having witnesses acknowledge them (Arendt 1998). Social network sites are yet another form of public space. Yet, while mediated and unmediated publics play similar roles in people’s lives, the mediated publics have four properties that are quite unique to them.
1.Persistence. What you say sticks around. This is great for asynchronous communication, but it also means that what you said at 15 is still accessible when you are 30 and have purportedly outgrown those childish days.
2 Searchability. My mother would’ve loved the ability to scream “Find!” into the ether and determine where I was hanging out with my friends. She couldn’t, and I’m thankful. Today’s teens’ parents have found their hangouts with the flick of a few keystrokes.
3 Replicability. Digital bits are copyable; this means that you can copy a conversation from one place and paste it into another place. It also means that it’s difficult to determine if the content was doctored.
4 Invisible audiences. While it is common to face strangers in public life, our eyes provide a good sense of who can overhear our expressions. In mediated publics, not only are lurkers invisible, but persistence, searchability, and replicability introduce audiences that were never present at the time when the expression was created.
These properties change all of the rules. At a first pass, it’s challenging to interpret context in a mediated space. Physical environments give us critical cues as to what is appropriate and not – through socialisation.
A transcript is available here
